The scrubby chaparral landscape that surrounds Santa Fe, with snowy mountains in the near distance, is a dominant feature of life in this little city in the desert. The elevation of 7200 feet means that Santa Fe is nearly half a mile higher than Denver, the famous mile high city. The Sangre de Cristo mountains are the southernmost range of the Rockies, and its highest peaks range from 12 to 15 thousand feet. In the picture you can see the thunder heads building over the Sangres, a hopeful sign of the early arrival of the monsoonal rains on which both nature and culture so heavily rely in this region.